Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2005 Sommario / Contents

The activities of the Forum already planned are:
“Making or Breaking Them – the Place of Music in the Future of Silent Film”: a special roundtable seminar on the successful promotion
of silent film in festivals, art cinemas, TV, and DVD. Presented in collaboration with the Collegium Sacilense.
Special orchestral and instrumental performances. There will be more such performances than ever before. The Octuor de France will perform
three scores, two of them created by resident Giornate musicians – Gabriel Thibaudeau (Au bonheur des dames) and Antonio Coppola (the openingnight
presentation of Jacques Feyder’s Crainquebille). For the closing gala the Octuor will perform Raymond Alessandrini’s score (incorporating
themes from Maurice Jaubert) for André Antoine’s L’Hirondelle et la Mésange, originally performed in 1984 when the film, never completed by
Antoine himself, was finally restored. Jen Anderson and The Larrikins come from Australia to accompany Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental
Bloke, handsomely restored since its last screening at the Giornate. John Davis has recreated the original cue-sheet score for Manhattan Madness,
retrieving all but three of the – often extraordinarily elusive – original cues. Three musical events are linked to Japanese cinema: the distinguished
Japanese musician Kensaku Tanikawa will accompany Daisuke Ito’s Slashing Swords and Mikio Naruse’s Every Night’s Dream; while Günter
Buchwald presents a chamber orchestra score for a melodrama set on the railroads, Tokkyu Sanbyaku Mairu (Special Express: 300 Miles). Finally,
Neil Brand and Maud Nelissen join forces in a buoyant demonstration of the role of music in silent comedy, each undertaking, inter alia, a Laurel
and Hardy short, respectively You’re Darn Tootin’ and Liberty.
The Otto Plaschkes Gift
Otto Plaschkes, the distinguished Austrian-born producer, who arrived in Britain as a kindertransport child, grew up to make possible such films
as Georgy Girl, Hopscotch, and Lindsay Anderson’s In Celebration. He came only once to the Giornate, but retained an enthusiastic interest in its
work, particularly in the use of music, a subject of particular, passionate concern to him. At his death, his widow Louise Stein asked his friends
to commemorate him by making any donations to the Giornate’s School of Music and Image.
Since the School is suspended for this year, because of the lack of suitable candidates, the decision on precisely how the fund will be applied will
be postponed until 2006. Meanwhile, however, all of us at the Giornate would like to express our gratitude to Louise, and to Otto, for the
characteristically warm and enthusiastic support he always gave us. – D AVID R OBINSON
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